Can we choose our own adventure wisdom? The Bible says “no” for a very important reason.

Study Questions

The following study questions are AI generated and may contain errors.

The preacher uses choose-your-own-adventure books to illustrate how we assume all life choices eventually lead to the same good ending. How does this metaphor clarify the difference between treating God’s wisdom as one optional path among many versus recognizing it as the foundational structure of reality itself? Where does the metaphor break down or have limits?
What does it mean practically that wisdom is the foundation of the world rather than just one option among many choices? How should this change the way we approach everyday decisions?
The sermon connects the tree of life in Proverbs 3:18 back to Genesis 3. How does that link reshape what restoration looks like for us, and what would it mean in daily life to be nourished by that tree again?
The tire analogy describes driving on a flat despite knowing the damage it causes. In what areas of life are you currently tempted to negotiate with obvious warning signs rather than deal with them? What makes us willing to keep driving on the rims?
The sermon contrasts stocking up on wisdom tips with actually knowing the Creator of wisdom through Christ. Where do you see this distinction playing out in modern Christian practice, and what does pursuing relationship with God rather than just better life strategies look like for you personally?

Transcript

This transcript has been automatically generated and may contain errors.

Did you have any choose-your-own-adventure books as a kid? I always remember being fascinated with those. They weren’t digital; we didn’t even have digital books at the time, we just had paper books, but those paper books had different options in them. You’d be reading along in the story and then you’d have a choice: were they going to knock on the door of the haunted house, were they going to creep around the back, or were they going to run home? And you could pick any of those options until you go to page such and such, and you go to that page, and what do you know? The story would continue right from where you had chosen. A little while later, there’d be another choice. When they find themselves in the dark haunted garage, do they stay in it or do they leave? Again, you could make a choice until you go to page 60 or 57 or whatever it might be, depending on which choice you made. But somehow at the end, what would happen? All the different paths you could take would still lead to that final choice that got you to the conclusion. Somehow it always worked out the same, right? You chose to go home, you fell in a trap door on the way away from the haunted house and ended up in it anyway. If you chose to walk around back and crawl in, you got caught by the same monster that was going to open the door if you knocked on it. It always worked out the same. I remember as a kid just being fascinated by how this worked and thinking about it a little and it makes sense. It’s really all scripted to end up in the same place, but just initially, it felt like, wow, I can make all these choices and somehow it works out.

Hi, welcome to Steadfast. I am so glad to be with you tonight as we continue our series in Proverbs chapter 3. Sometimes we think of life—I’d say actually most of the time—I could choose my own adventure. We mean that in two different ways at the same exact time, exactly like those books. On the one hand, we mean I can choose whatever I want to do. Maybe even a little bit of how dare Proverbs chapter 3 or any other section of the Bible tell me how I should choose. I am going to choose my own adventure. We have that aspect. But on top of that, we have a second one. Somehow I know whatever choices I’m going to make, I’m going to end up at that conclusion where I ought to be, where everything wraps up neatly at the end of the story. Because those choose-your-own-adventure books, they didn’t end in a cliffhanger. They ended up in a nice, neat, and tidy resolution. And since they were children’s books, of course, everyone was okay at the end. Kind of act like life is like that too.

What Proverbs wants us to understand clearly, what the wisdom we find in here is telling us is that the path of wisdom is not a choose-your-own-adventure. I’ll try this little bit of wisdom from over here, and this little bit of wisdom from over there, and try some foolishness just for fun in the midst, and it’ll all work out. It doesn’t really matter what I choose because in the end it all leads to the same conclusion anyway. No, the path of wisdom is a distinctly different path than the path of foolishness, which is anything other than God’s wisdom, including the other things that claim to be wisdom. The path of wisdom tells us to go to page 60; the other paths, they tell us to burn the book and buy a different one, take us someplace entirely different. But our fallen nature really wants to think it’s just another choose-your-own-adventure. As we continue to explore tonight, we’ll see why it’s impossible for that to be the case. It simply isn’t aligned with how the world actually is.

Let’s pray tonight that we better understand God’s way, which isn’t a choose-your-own-adventure, but be blessed by God’s adventure for us.

Let’s pray. Father, thank you for this evening. Thank you for your word. Would you help us to understand your word better today, and as we do, to live according to it through the strength of your Spirit? We pray in Jesus’ precious name, Amen.

Here’s why God’s wisdom isn’t just one option on that list of different choices in a choose-your-own-adventure. God’s wisdom isn’t just a thing out there in the world. God’s wisdom is the thing that’s the foundation of the world. Profound difference. The Lord by wisdom founded the earth; by understanding he established the heavens. Wisdom is the foundation of the world, not an overlay on top of it. Here, you can improve the world this way, right? All these different things that claim to be wisdom, you can hack your life to be better by following this simple tip kind of wisdom, which sometimes is wisdom and sometimes isn’t. Wisdom is the very underpinnings of the world. If we want to understand the structure of the world and how it works, God’s wisdom is it.

And it’s linked to the very beginning. We go back to Genesis 3.18, 3.22 rather. We find the tree of life that Adam and Eve are not going to be able to enjoy because of their sin. Not at the time, but take a look at Proverbs 3.18. She is a tree of life to those who lay hold of her. Those who hold her fast are called blessed. Wisdom realigns us back to where we were supposed to be because that tree of life, it wasn’t supposed to be cut off from humanity. It was our sin that cuts us off from it, right? We couldn’t, in an unrestored state, partake of the tree of life. But here we’re told that the wisdom of God is an invitation back to that foundational nourishment that we need.

We think about how creation is described. Here’s how creation is built. Here’s how God ordered the world. And in the middle of that garden that he placed humanity in, what is there? There’s a tree of life. And here’s an invitation. We don’t have to stay broken. We don’t have to stay as those who live in a fallen world, as fallen people, making fallen choose-your-own adventures. We can instead be aligned to how we originally were supposed to be and partake of that tree of life that was what we were supposed to have all along. Wisdom realigns us from that terrible disjointed situation that sin places us in back into that garden existence where it’s not a choose-your-own-adventure. There aren’t a bunch of different possibilities on how it could go. There’s just the right one, the good one, the one that we really yearn for anyway.

Choosing wisdom puts us in harmony with creation because creation was meant to function this way, not in the way that we tried to do. People do all kinds of things for ecology and I’m all for planting more trees and taking care of them and not polluting our rivers and so on. Those are good things because God made a good world. But we need to understand the foundational thing. We can’t ever clean up the world enough to make it so that we as human beings won’t mess it up. But we can be realigned with the Creator and with his creation. And that does what our efforts never can do. We need to know where we’re supposed to be.

Choose-your-own-adventure intentionally leaves you hanging. Which choice is the right one? Which one’s going to be, at least if you’re reading the book for excitement, you’re not really worried what happens to the people, you’re just excited to see what’s going to happen. Well, then it might be which option is going to be the most interesting. But in our lives, what we want to know is which one’s going to actually allow me to be what I’m supposed to be, to live as I’m supposed to live, to, in a right way, enjoy life, because I’m not fighting against what it’s supposed to be. I’m not accidentally walking into the dangerous garage. I’m going exactly where I should be. God says, well, look back to how creation was and let me invite you on the path that takes you there. Know what realignment looks like, being nourished by the tree of life, by the wisdom that I’ve offered. And that way you know what you shouldn’t do.

We’ve all had our hearts sink when we walk out to our car and think, I think the tire looks a little low. And you look and you see that little shiny thing sticking out of it. Happens a lot this time of year. We have some severe storms and the roofers come in and some nails end up in the street and what do you know, you have a nail in your tire. And you know what will happen if you decide to drive it and the tire doesn’t have enough air in it. You know you’ll not only ruin the tire—that may already be the case—you’ll also ruin the wheel and perhaps do even more untold damage to your car beyond that. It’ll be very, very bad.

But we’ve probably also all played the game, is it really as low as I think it is? You need to get someplace. And you look at that tire and you think, it does look like it’s bulging out a little bit. Do the other tires, you know, they kind of look like they’re bulging out. Let me kick the tire, right? We all feel like we need to kick the tire if it looks low. Even if we don’t really know what we should make of how our foot feels when we kick the tire. It’s just what you do. Kick the tire. We look at it. And then there’s the negotiation. I wonder if I could get to where I need to get to before I deal with that shiny thing sticking out of my tire. Maybe it’s holding enough air in. Maybe it’s okay. Is it really that low?

We often ask, is it really that low if I choose not to go God’s wisdom path? Because it seems like it’s going to take too much time, too much commitment, too much of things I don’t want to give right now. Maybe my sin, it might be a bunch of little shiny things popping out of the tires of life. But maybe enough air staying in, I can go a different way. I can choose a different adventure. And it will still ultimately get me to where I’m supposed to go. How deflated is it? Maybe it always looks like that.

In life, that’s sort of true, right? Because we’ve always been deflated tires. We’ve always been affected by sin. So we look at the tires of our lives and they’re bulging, but they always bulge. Maybe it should just be that way. But here we’re told, but look at what it looked like without that. Does your life look like that? Are all the tires nice and full, filled with the air of the tree of life? Or not? Because we keep running on the rims and the sparks are flying and they’re clunking further and further. We’re doing damage to ourselves and we think, well, I’m just choosing my own adventure. I’ll get there. All paths lead ultimately to God, right? Well, wisdom, even stuff that really isn’t wisdom, well, if I’m met well and I’m a mostly good person, it’s really okay. But I can tell you, no matter how mostly good of a person you are, if you get into a car and you drive it and the tire is flat, it’s still going to do damage.

The rim doesn’t say, I’m not going to get all beat up on the road because I’m being driven by a mostly good person. It doesn’t work. It doesn’t work in any part of life. It’s not how we fool ourselves into thinking it really is just that choose-your-own-adventure. But it’s not. It’s not how things operate in life.

And not only because wisdom is the foundation of the world, but wisdom actually formed the world, shaped the world. Take a look at verse 20. By his knowledge, the primordial sea was broken open and the clouds dripped down dew. Wisdom didn’t just serve as a foundation to the world. Wisdom formed the world. And the imagery being used here may not strike us that much. We’re used to it in creation imagery. But this primordial set of waters being split, this deep being split open and shaped, it isn’t just something found in the beginning of Genesis. It’s referring to the fear that these people had of the seas.

What do you mean? Well, maybe we all fear a little bit the idea of being shipwrecked, but what do you mean to fear the seas? Well, for one, as far as the Israelites go, they were never a seafaring people. They did not have great success at it. So there was that. But even beyond that, there was certainly a fear in the ancient world because you didn’t have GPS. You didn’t have all kinds of modern navigation systems. You had, certainly compared to what we have now, rickety boats. And so even the more successful seafaring nations, they didn’t have a very good grasp of the sea.

And I think about even today, this past week we heard about the American troops that were flying an Apache helicopter and it crashed into the sea and thankfully they were rescued and they survived. But I think the fact that we even took note of it is partially tied to the sense that we still have today. If you fall in the sea, it’s not a sure thing that you’re going to survive, that you’re going to be rescued. It’s a dangerous place and there’s a very good chance you might get lost and ultimately drown. Take away all the modern radar and technology and imaging and other craft flying around the sky and you just put yourself out there, it’s a fearsome place. Just a human being, by him or herself, facing off against the sea is powerful.

Then take the primordial sea, a sea not yet shaped to do anything other than be a force that we can’t ultimately control. How do you feel about it? If you don’t want to be dropped in an ocean today, even if you knew that there was an aircraft flying overhead, keeping track of you to make sure you didn’t really drown, most of us would say, yeah, I don’t really just want to be dropped out in the middle of the ocean and left there for a while to see what I do. How much worse if you took away all the modern creature encompassments? Scripture and the ancient world used that sort of imagery to get across how powerful these things were. And yet we’re told here wisdom can take that powerful thing that no one had any ability even to track, much less control—we still can’t really control it—and actually controlled it, split it, formed land out of it.

How can an idea do that? We talk about ideas being powerful and to a degree they are, but I’ve never seen an idea split the ocean or even split a rock or split water coming out of my tap. It doesn’t do that. So how does it do it here? Because wisdom isn’t just an idea. That’s the key thing. Why can’t it be that powerful? Because it’s more than an idea. It’s what we read in John 1. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was fully God. The Word was with God in the beginning. All things were created by him, and apart from him not one thing was created that has been created. And him was life, and the life was the light of mankind.

How can wisdom take this thing that even today we can’t really control, and removed from all of our modern technology we really can’t control? We haven’t learned something new to control. How can wisdom do that? Because wisdom isn’t just an idea. Wisdom is God.

When John talks in John 1 about the Word, he’s referring explicitly back to Proverbs. Everyone reading it would have recognized that. They would have seen that language and known what he was saying. He was saying this wisdom that already was hinted at as being personified back in Proverbs, guess what? We actually met him. He’s a real person. He’s someone you can interact with. And we saw him do powerful things like stop storms.

When I talk about splitting the oceans, we’ve seen him actually control the waters and the winds, the things that no one back in John’s day could do, but no one really in our day can do either, right? We can think we have control of the weather and then we’re reminded that we don’t. We can think we can control the seas and then there’s an earthquake and a tsunami comes roaring through. We can’t do anything about it other than tell people to run. We can’t either. But the Creator can. The one who actually formed the seas, his primordial waters were nothing for him. He simply spoke and they obeyed because they were his. He created them.

And so when we talk about not doing a choose-your-own-adventure but being on God’s adventure where he carries us to where we’re supposed to be, we’re not talking about merely aligning with an idea or a principle. It isn’t enough to say, well, God has some good ideas. I’ll try those. It’s about being aligned with the Creator. The very thing that was true in the garden until the fall, right? Human beings walked with God and sin breaks that relationship. That’s where the break with the tree of life happens. And wisdom says, here’s the path back. God actually loves you and cares about you. But on our own, we can’t actually choose what’s described here in Proverbs 3. That’s why we need that follow-up in John 1, that wisdom actually came and got us. Wisdom, the one that made everything, the one that could control the waters, came into the world, lived that wise life, and died for us, that we actually can be realigned not just with creational ideal, but with the Creator himself.

Years ago, I remember Aldi had these fantastic ribs. I just want to tell you about these. They were so good. They had just this perfect, slightly sweet, slightly tangy sauce on them. And they eliminated everything that might be annoying about a rib, right? Because ribs are really good, but you have all those bones and you’re constantly fighting with them and they’re messy. Well, these were deboned ribs, not boneless in the sense of those little forms of patties like what goes on a McRib. They were actual ribs, still pure rib meat, but they’d remove the bones, put them in this wonderful sauce, and you could stick it in the oven and it was ready to go. It was delicious.

And they had them for a while, and then they’d go away for a season, they’d come back. My family, every time that they came in, we would stock up because they were delicious. They were wonderful. So you could buy some and you’d know that they’d go away for a while, but they’d come back. You put some in the freezer. You’d feel pretty good if you had five of them in the freezer or four of them in the freezer. You start getting a little nervous. Oh, I hope they’re coming back soon. And then they’d come back. Then you could realign with the creation of ribs, right? You could go and get some more ribs. And I was at harmony with those ribs. I mean, they were delicious.

But one day they didn’t bring them back. They simply chose not to. I don’t know why. They were so good. I can’t imagine they weren’t selling them. But then they quit bringing them back. And I can still think about it and taste that wonderfully sweet, tangy barbecue sauce and the perfectly tender rib meat. Just perfect. I can still taste it if I imagine it, but I can’t have any. It doesn’t matter how much I feel at harmony with that memory. They’re gone.

For a while, maybe it felt like there was a restoration of harmony when you could stock the freezer back up with more of them. But having five or even 10 or 20 or however many you could stick in a freezer wouldn’t actually bring true harmony because eventually that supply was going to dwindle or get freezer burnt and go bad. It was good for a while. Choose-your-own-adventures are good often for a while.

And I think about those ribs. If I could just contact the right person at Aldi, because Aldi sources their products from different companies like other store brands do. And if I could just find out where did they get those? And I’d find that there was some place that still makes them and they’ve been making them for a hundred years. They’re going to keep making them. I could actually go and get them. How much better would that be? Or if they weren’t going to make them, maybe they’d give me the recipe, right? And I’d learn about how to make that sweet, tangy barbecue sauce and exactly how they prepared the ribs. They were just so perfect every time.

Being aligned with the creator of that recipe would make a huge difference compared to simply being able to stock up. We often go to God’s wisdom saying, how can I stock up? I need a little bit more in my freezer right now. That would help me right now. I’d feel pretty good right now if I just had five boxes of ribs in my freezer. That’s all I really need, God. And so we go chasing after those prosperity gospel preachers or the YouTube video that says ten easy steps to living God’s way or whatever, and we think, I’ll just stock up a little and then it’ll be okay.

But when we think about how wisdom is actually described, what we’re being told is we’re being invited to something better. Because even if you get a good stock for today of ribs, you’re going to eat them. Or if you hoard them and you don’t eat them, well, that’s not any good either because you’re not actually enjoying them. You’re either going to run out or go bad. Those are the options. What happens when you actually get to go and get the recipe? What happens when you get to go and meet the creator of them? In fact, God is the creator of ribs and everything else good in this world. He is the creator of this world.

Truth is, no matter how much we stock up and we think that wisdom will help us to fill in that stockpile, it isn’t going to work. And when we go on that choose-your-own-adventure, it sends us off out of the book into another book that ultimately spells our misery and doom. But here we’re told the one who authored the world and can tell us, yeah, this is how you generally should operate in the world is also the one who says, follow my wisdom, write to me. Because I am wisdom. It’s about knowing me.

If we really say, well, I want to know what this wisdom book has to say because wisdom will make me feel more harmonious with creation or myself or whatever, we need to understand that wisdom actually promises something so much better. It promises harmony with him. We’ll never run out of stock of the blessings of being in relationship to him when we actually know him.

Would you pray with me, please? Father, thank you for this evening. Thank you for these friends that we get to gather together and study your word each week. Lord, would you help us to be those who actually pursue what your wisdom truly is, that we’d understand that it’s so foundational to the world, we certainly can’t choose some alternate path here or there and get to where we want to be. Give us the strength to follow your wisdom, but more importantly, then remind us also that it’s not ultimately about us just following enough wisdom to get the stockpile. It’s about us meeting wisdom because our God himself has come into this world and we actually can know wisdom, not know of wisdom, not know an idea, if only it describes how the waters work but the one who actually can call the waters apart.

We pray that you’d help us to know that today and to live according to that through the power of your Holy Spirit. We pray in Jesus’ precious name, amen.

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